There is a great value in doing the pre-work (which sounds like a post taken from LinkedIn). But really, I think the setup for a project should be considered the first major step in completing the project. If you don’t give it the proper time, you can still make the project, but it might be less sustainable over the long term, harder to revisit or recycle, and less polished. I believe that final 10% of polish and details makes all the difference.
For print work and layout, I’ve broken that down into a checklist for myself so that I know I have everything set up before I get into creative problem solving and nitty-gritty decision making.
If you are new to layout design, this is a useful resource for seeing an overview of this portion of the zine making process. If you’re a creator with some knowledge under your belt, you still might learn a trick or two and save yourself a few future headaches. If you hire layout designers instead, you can see all the work and knowledge that goes into even just setting up a document.
This blog covers setup and pre-layout checklist items. In the next blog I’ll be covering my post-layout print checklist.
Table of Contents
Before Setup
I’ll need a few pieces of information decided before I can make my digital document; the trim size and the binding method.
Trim Size
This is the final measurements of the zine when printed, folded, and closed (ex: Digest = 5.5 inches by 8.5 inches when the zine is closed).
Binding Method
If the binding method has no spine—saddle stitched, singer sewn, square back bound, open binding, coil, wire-o, comb bound, swiss bound—I’ll have less loss in the center of the book to what we call the “gutter”. If this is the case, I plan my gutter to be similar to my other margins, probably .5 inch is still wise for the sides of the pages that meet where the book folds.
If it is going to be perfect bound, smyth-sewn, hardback, or a method where when the book is open the book the pages do not lay flat, I’ll need a larger gutter. If this is the case, I suggest a minimum of .75 inches for your gutter.
Now I will start setting up our document. In my chosen program I create a file with pages that are each my trim size, and make sure to choose the “facing pages” option. This gives me two pages next to each other so I can see what’s called a “spread”.
Document Setup
Bleed
During document set up I also determine the “bleed” or extra space around the edges for those pieces of art that go off the page. You can read more about bleed in this article from Explorer’s Design. The standard for many printers is 1/8th inch (.125 in) or 3mm. I make sure to check with the printer in case they have different specifications.
Edit on Master Pages
One of the very first things I do in my document is navigate to my Master Pages. I want to be making my edits first here for margins, columns, and layers that then get reflected on my document as a whole as long as they are using this first set of master pages. It just saves time on setup.
Margins
I usually set up my margins early, but tend to mess around with them after doing some initial layout. I usually determine margins based on a few things.
- Does the project have a page limit?
If there is a hard cut off then I’ll try and gain some space in by making my margins smaller (not the inside margin though, which is that gutter!). - Does the project theme lend itself to an open or airy feeling, or a tight, cramped feeling?
Everything, even the details of a book can speak to the concept of a project.
I tend to leave a little extra space on the bottom margins to make sure I have room for page numbers and section markers. If a project is designed with lots of marginalia style spot art I will go for big margins especially on the inner and outer edges. Part of why I mess with the margins throughout setup is because as I learn my typographic needs and my columns I can adjust margins to serve me best.
Columns
To make things easy on myself I like to start with my go-to 6 column layout. It’s divisible by 3 and by 2 and it’s not too many for a Digest or A5 page. If a project is Letter or A4, I often go for 12 or 10 columns. My trick is to set up columns and stick to them. Columns help build a grid that aligns your text and art, and this gives things an underlying sense of cohesion. You can read more about the Grid System many places including this Explorer’s Design blog.
Typesetting
This is the stage at which you’ll want to do your typesetting. I would say that typesetting is not my strongest area, and I know that it can really be a rabbit hole. If you’d like to learn more about typesetting you can check out this guide.
Once I have styled my body text styled, as well as Heading 1, Heading 2, and maybe Heading 3 planned out, I turn these into paragraph styles. Paragraph styles allow you to one click apply a style to a paragraph, as well as alter all the text using that style in just a few clicks. This is hugely helpful as you setup your document.
The way I setup a paragraph style is to set up a sample exactly how I want. Let’s say I want my body to be EB Garamond Regular 9.5 with 13 pt leading and 10 tracking. I will set up a section of text like that, then highlight it, and create a new paragraph style. This will make the paragraph style based on the highlighted text. I then name it body, and I’m all set. From there I can go to that body paragraph style and make tweaks as I do my first page sample.
Its worth noting that I am of the camp that body text should be either all black or all white. This matters more in Offset printing, but really helps keeps the text from getting blurred by the different colors being printed in slightly different places as the printer goes through cyan, magenta, yellow, and black layers. Body text is quite small and thin and so any misalignment is a bigger deal.
When making white body text I also consider that light text on dark backgrounds looks to “shrink” so I’ll make it a tiny bit larger or choose a heavier weight font.
Baseline Grid
This is a slightly more “advanced” tool that is tied with using paragraph and text styles. I do this after I’ve done a test page or two. After I know my typesetting, I set my baseline to be half the height of the leading of my body style. So if my body font is leaded at 13pt, then my baseline grid is set every 6.5pts. This lets me space things by a half a line rather than forcing text to be always at least 13pt away from the last line. I do this for flexibility in my design.
Background
This is about the stage where I plan out a basic background for my standard set of master pages. After I design a border element or apply a color to the background, I will select everything and move it to a layer labeled “background” and make sure that layer is the lowest layer in the layer panel. Anything else I make on other pages that is considered background I put on this layer.
Page Markers
To make page numbers, on the master pages, I create and select an empty text box.
- InDesign: go to Type > Insert Special Character > Markers > Current Page Number
- Affinity: go to Text > Insert > Fields > Page Number
Usually this will show up as the letter of the set of master pages currently selected, most commonly “A”. Then I’ll style this page number how I like, highlight it and make a paragraph style for it called “Page Numbers”. I love being kind to my future self here, and making things easy, just in case I need to tweak the page number stylization later.
Next I create a new layer and label it “Page Numbers” and move the text boxes to that layer. This I put this layer on top of every other layer I have or will make, so that the Page numbers are always on top.
For larger books I create section markers on my master pages so that as the reader goes through chapters of the book, they can navigate more easily. This is the same process as adding page numbers but I’ll choose “section marker” or “section name” in Affinity instead. This helps a lot in TTRPG projects since games are often not read linearly—from front to back—but are instead referenced by specific sections.
Layers
I’ve begun the practice of setting up layers also for different portions of the layout. Usually the top one is for Page numbers or page markers, and perhaps borders that I want to be above everything. Then I’ll have a layer for Art, Text, and then Background. This does allow me to hide things as I work.
Additionally moving information to separate layers, especially text being on its own layer, and creating an interactive PDF version of your project means that people can turn off the layers and see the text only, making the game easier to read by those with visual impairment.
Conclusion
Some of these steps happen along side the start of the layout process proper, but in general this set up will help me warm up and get ready to do the bulk of the layout without pausing or backtracking to add these things in. Even if I end up deleting or ignoring something, it’s way faster to do that than to go back and rearrange.
In the next post, I’ll cover the second portion of the checklist, after the bulk of the layout is done: making sure everything is ready to go to print.